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Published: January 15th 2013
Puerto Oktay
We left the Navimag ferry in Puerto Mont and made our way by bus along with our Ausie friends Luke and Gen to Puerto Oktay and just outside town a eco friendly hostel called the Yellow Shoe, set in rolling lush green fields, the hostel is run by a Swiss man and his Chilean wife who between them cooked us some of the best food we had tasted for a while. The dorm in the hostel was an octagon shape and slept 7 with each bed fitting in under the roof on 7 sides of the octagon with the 8th side occupied by the stairs, in the center of the roof is a large glass window through which you could watch the stars, but the best view from the hostel was that of the snow capped extinct Volcano Osorno, which sort of looked wrong, looming over the green fields but at the same time was amazing to see. Day two we took the bus to a water fall on the side of the Volcano (fed by a Glacier on the top) which proved more exciting than it sounds, we missed the first bus because it was early (never
Bed pods
Yellow shoe hostel happens in England) so by this we missed our connecting bus and found ourselves stuck in the middle of nowhere (the next bus was in 5 hours) we stuck our thumbs out to the first vehicle large enough for four and a man in a pickup squeezed us all in a drove us over half an hour to the base of the volcano, we followed a river up through jungle like vegetation for an hour to be rewarded with a waterfall in a horseshoe shaped canyon about 150 mts high, we got soaked by the spray but the vegetation and moses around the canyon were thriving in this mini rain forest. Luke and Gen left the next morning for Bariloche, we decided to visit Frutillar a small town on the lake settled by Germans in the 1830s, again the buses got us, we were there 10 minutes before it went and waited for 30 minutes, no bus (sunday service we later found out) but this again meant we missed our connecting bus so we trudged back to the hostel only to be met by two men from Belgium who were staying in our hostel in their hire car , Jean
Sunset
View from the top windows and Nico who seeing our sad little faces asked if we wanted to spend the day with them touring the area and a lake behind the volcano, it turned out to be lucky that the bus never came as the lake was beautiful, totally surrounded by mountains and volcanos, with large homes on its steep shores owned by the rich and were only assessable by boat, Jean who spoke perfect spanish (unlike us) rented a fishing boat at a very cheep price to take us on a tour of the lake and small islands The day ended back at the hostel with home cooked pasta and large amounts of white (aperitif) and red wine and two very humorous new friends. The buses were back to normal the next day so we found ourselves in Frutillar a totally german looking town, we visited a settlers museum to find out more, the settlers were invited by the Chilean government in the 1830s because the south of chile was still empty, the Germans who came at that time were fed up at home with the rich getting richer (sounds familiar) they were shipped to Puerto Mont, a journey around Cape Horn which took
Hidden valley
Waterfall under the volcano Osorno many months with only their best clothes, linen and a few personal belongings, they were given plots of land around the lake but had to hack their way through the jungle to reach their land and then clear the land of vegetation before building wooden shelters and planting crops, so it made us understand that of course they would want to recreate the towns that they had left at home, to settle in the harsh new land. We spent our last evening with Chilean food and lots more laughs and wine Belgium style
Pucon
Back on the buses the next day, first to Osorno then a bus to Pucon, a six hour move north. Pucon is a town next to the dazling blue lake Villarrica and overshadowed by the still active volcano of the same name Villarrica at 2800mts The main town is quite touristy with many restaurants and tour operators offering adrenaline activities, we chose to climb to the top of the volcano and that same day were kitted out with boots, waterproof jacket and trousers, helmet, gaiters an ice axe and a bum sledge. The next morning we met at 6.30am and met our
Volcano Osorno
Day trip out with our Belgium friends fellow climbers, a mixed bunch French, American, English and a Chinese girl who did not pay attention to anything the guides said, the van took us up to the ski resort at 1400mts we were given the choice of walking the next 400mts or taking the chair lift, we opted for the lift, the French to walk which pleased us, at 1800mts the sensible chair lift group were gathered together for a safety talk on how to stop ourselves with the ice axe if we slipped from ending up back down the bottom (the slope was about 45-50 degrees and a mix of snow and ice) we set off with the guide at the front chipping steps for everybody following to use, we did not walk straight up as this was too steep but zigzagged up stopping every so often for breath, it took us 4 hours to climb the 1000mts to the smoking rim of the volcano, we were rewarded with panoramic views of the Lake District and the Andes mountains and volcanos stretching to the horizon in both directions, we could even see the volcano Osorno were we stayed two days ago 250km away. We had by this
Waterfall
River running through the lava field time had been climbing in tee shirts but quickly had to put our coats back on gloves and hats as the wind made the temperature well below zero, the sulphuric smoke bellowing from the mouth of the volcano was blowing in the other direction which was good as it is highly poisonous, after a bite to eat lots off photos it was time to leave, this was the fun bit, we had noticed on the way up round groves running straight down the volcano our guides told us to get out our bum sledges sit in the groves use the ice axe as a brake and go, the first 100mts was terrifying, almost like throwing yourself off a cliff but as the confidence grew so did the speed, we had to change groves every so often but the 1400mts down over 3km took about 30 minutes, it was the best sledge ride ever.
We bumped into Luke and Gen the next day (this happens all the time with the travellers heading in the same direction, we were in the north pack) and visited some hot springs warmed by the volcano which relaxed our aching muscles from yesterdays climb.
Santiago
After a night bus ride we arrived at the bus terminal in Santiago at 7am, it was too early to arrive at the hostel so we found a cafe for breakfast, all they served was a kind of hot dog smothered with mashed advacado yum yum, we found the hostel but the front gates were locked, Rudi the owner had the evening before stayed up late partying because it was children in need on the telly and the chileans use this as a party excuse, after some heavy rattling we managed to wake our host who showed us to our room.
Santiago we found is a pleasant busy city with many museums and churches surrounded by mountains, (don't believe the guide books who warn you away) just off the main square Plaza de Armas (they are all named after some guy with a big sword) we found the fish market, a huge roofed market, in the middle were expensive restaurants and all around the outside were the stalls selling fresh fish, more types of fish and shellfish than we could count, Rudi had told us to go to one of the small restaurants on the
fringe where the locals eat, and he was right we had huge portions of fish for next to nothing, on our way out we purchased 20 Scallops for our tea which cost us £3
We saw the changing of the guard the next day a few more museums and up to the view point high above the city the Cerrro San Cristobol, this was crowded as it was Sunday and the rest of Santiago had had the same idea, nice city Santiago we could have spent a few more days there.
Vicuńa
The night bus to Vicuńa arrived at 7am so we walked around looking for a cafe only to be told the only one open that time in the morning was at the bus station, the cafe owner Jess made us coffee then tried to get us a taxi and as there were none she decided to drive us herself (friendly lot the Chileans) Hostel Donde Rita is run by Rita from Germany which helped with the communication between us. In town we met another German resident who offered us a chance for a fee to view the sun through his telescope, the telescope
Fruitillar
The German settlers town had a special lens that filters out all the colours except red which means we would not burn our eyes out, he told us various facts about the sun and we could see block spots and the solar flares which were 200,000km long we also covered UFO's, parallel universes and the worlds economic state and what needs to be done (maybe he had been in the sun too long?) that same evening we had booked a tour to a private run observatory (Chile has the clearest sky for star watching, on most of the mountain tops are telescopes financed by countries around the world) The mini bus up to the mountain top was up a gravel road with spectacular views and sheer drops, at the top we met the French astrologer who showed us his 20inch telescope (ha ha) it was computer controlled so he could easily find the small points he wanted to show us, by this time it was really dark and although we have been in the Southern Hemisphere for three months we had always had light pollution, we have never seen so many stars with the naked eye before (there are a lot more in the
Pucon volcano Villarrico
The eager group at the start south) through the telescope we saw galaxies 20-100-120 and 250million light years away, we saw red dwarfs (dead stars) and new stars, Jupiter and three of its moons, we also saw the Magellan clouds the only two galaxies that can be seen with the naked eye, (unfortunately only in the southern hemisphere) A fascinating geeky day.
Vicuna and the Elqui valley are in a desert and the only river which is fed by the glaciers in the Andes makes it so green, the main crop here is grapes but because it is so hot the grapes have a high sugar content and do not make a good wine so they use them to make "Pisco" a strong spirt similar to Grappa or German schnapps,we did a tour of the distillery and sampled some of the products.
The town of Vicuna is surrounded by rounded mountains covered in Cacti, we climbed to the top of the one behind the hostel and then we were able to walk from hill to hill without too many up and downs, the views were amazing and we could have walked further but as the temperature was close to 40 degrees and we were
Volcano Villarrico
Starting to feel the burn running out of water we decided to head back.
San Pedro de Atacama
This was a three bus journey the first was from Vicuna to La Serena, a seaside city raided in 1554 by the pirate Frances Drake, but we only saw the bus station, the next hop was the night bus north to Calama, and into the Atacama desert, Calama is a big mining town and as we approached we noticed vast areas where they were storing a liquid slurry, part of the copper separation process, it did not look or smell very nice, Calama has no central bus station just small companies dotted around the city so it took us quite a bit of wandering to find the bus that went to San Pedro. The bus took two hours across some stunning scenery, San Pedro de Atacama is an oasis town of single story adobe (mud) houses, there has been no recorded rain here since the Spanish started keeping records in1547, and when we stepped off the bus it was like stepping into a oven, on finding our hostel (I always find that strange that even in a small town the taxi drivers do
not know many streets) we bumped into Edda and Jutta who we had met on the Navimag ferry who told us that Luke and Gen were also in town, we all met up that evening in a local bar and had a few pisco sours.
The next morning early we had booked a 3 hour horse riding trip out to Death Valley, a nice way to see the surrounding volcanos, sand dunes and wind sculptured rocks, my horse decided that I was unnecessary and tried to buck me off on every downhill slope.
Alison went with Luke and Gen to the salt lakes ( I got Bolivian tum and decided to stay at the hostel) to visit two lakes "Laguna Cejar and Tebenquiche where the salt content is so high that you float on the top. The next morning we took the 9 hour bus journey out of Chile and back into Argentina to Salta.
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Paul Cottrell
non-member comment
Love the sledge ride - who is writing all this???